Oct 31, 2008

Terkel dead at 96

Pulitzer-prize winning author and commentator Studs Terkel has died. He was 96.

From the obit in the LAT:

The author of blockbuster oral histories on World War II, the Great Depression, and contemporary attitudes toward work, Terkel roamed the country engaging an astounding cross-section of Americans in tape-recorded chats -- about their dreams, their fears, their chewing gum, about racism, courage, dirty floors, the Beatles.

With his loud laugh and raspy voice, plus his inept fumbles with his tape recorder, he set his subjects at ease and tugged from them memories, predictions and simple truths about their everyday existence. Terkel transcribed and edited the interviews, then compiled them into books at once intimate and sweeping, among them "Division Street," "Hard Times," "Working," and "The Good War," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984.